Dispelling Myths & Urban Legends

"You know, if you keep chokin' your chicken, you know, shavin' your bishop like that, you'll go blind." "That's just an old wives' tale!" "Maybe so, but you will definitely grow hair on the palms of your hands." "Whatever!" "Okay, but listen, I have it on good authority that guys only have 1,000 ejaculations in them for life, so if you want to have kids you'd better stop shooting for the ceiling..."

With the unedited Internet spewing as much hooey as truth, these days it's harder than ever to separate fact from fiction. Some stories we hear are new tales based on current fears. We hear them from a personal friend, who claims to know of something that happened to a friend of a friend, and we don't question the source.

Other myths are as old as the proverbial wives who tell them. We hear them when we're so young we'd believe almost anything, and now we've believed them for so long that they still seem just as true as when we first heard them. I mean, just how long do you really have to wait after eating before you can go swimming?

To get the answer to this and other things you've heard but aren't sure are true, read on.

myths

Definition: In common parlance, myths are traditional sacred stories, often featuring gods and heroes, which claim to explain a natural phenomenon or cultural practice. But myths can also simply be an invented story we want to believe because, well, it makes a good story. Myths often have a hint of scandal about them, as the following two examples demonstrate.

The story you may have heard goes something like this: immediately after Neil Armstrong uttered his famous, "That's one small step for man..." quote during the first moon landing, he then tacked on the cryptic phrase, "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky!" Armstrong finally explained what this meant in 1995, telling a reporter that, as a kid, he had fetched a fly ball hit by his brother into the yard of his neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky. As he was picking up the ball, he apparently overheard Mrs. Gorsky shouting, "Oral sex? Oral sex you want? You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"

What makes this story believable lies in the details. Every version that is recounted uses a Jewish-sounding name for the neighbors: Gorsky, Shultz, Klein, and the like. Couple this with the fact that the phrasing of "Oral sex you want?" follows a speech pattern stereotypically attributed to Jews, and the tale takes on a ring of truth.

But perhaps what makes the story most effective is the fact that people want to believe it; it makes Armstrong, a cultural icon, seem like a charismatically funny, regular guy.

But the story is just too perfect. It turns out that these believable elements could be the deft work of comedian Buddy Hackett — Armstrong himself first heard the anecdote in one of Hackett's routines in 1995. Go ahead, check NASA's transcripts — mentions of Mr. Gorsky are nowhere to be found.

Lucy in the sky, cell phone disasters, and just what is Kentucky Fried Chicken made from, anyway?